


UNTRUST US

by MechanicalMermaids



Series: UNTRUST US verse [1]
Category: Borderlands
Genre: Episode 5 Spoilers, M/M, Not A Fix-It, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-27 11:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5045932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MechanicalMermaids/pseuds/MechanicalMermaids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just plug it in.<br/>Nuh-uh.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Liar

The anger is a familiar weight, but silence, silence tastes suspiciously like _disappointment_. Rhys doesn't say a single thing throughout the whole Helios evacuation, his empty glare flashing on the flickering screens as the station's emergency power systems are shutting down and the sirens are howling relentlessly.

Jack is taunting, barely focusing on the words, trying not to notice growing glitches at the edges of his vision and about billion angry red **"URGENT NOTICE"** 's alerting him of what mayhem every Hyperion employee with two working brain cells would have already noticed.

Space eating into Helios insides feels freezing, but his wiring is burning.

\----

He comes to on the debris filled ground, in the shattered sharp pieces scattered around Rhys.

Jack hears his own voice muttering something incoherently. Audio modulator cuts all the sentences in halves, stuttering and groaning on top of **"23% DATA CORRUPTION"** _ERROR_ that keeps overlaying Rhys' face threateningly.

"Why are you even still here?"

Oh. Right. Helios. **Burning.**

Jack just laughs but it comes out sounding all wrong.

Rhys sighs. Then says again.

"If your paranoid self still wants to do this, then we will. On my terms."

Something unexplainable howls and expands in the distance.

" _What? Do what?_ "

Jack's not sure what cybernetic he's bound to anymore. Clearly it's somewhere in Rhys'  vincity, but it's hard to tell since kid keeps creeping in and out of his field of vision.

"Come on, you shithead," Rhys mutters through the electronic snow storm that keeps flooding Jack's senses. Something pulls, then snaps and Jack is back in now **"50% CORRUPTED DATA"** state. Rhys is currently standing a lot closer with hands on his hips and pixels rearranging madly around the bright yellow echo eye, when he speaks.

"I need you to pull that port closer to me."

Jack blinks. Or at least he's projecting blinking.

" _Look,_ " And Jack is looking. The kid is currently standing on top of the vaguely familiar pile of broken wood and burned yellow pieces of what could have been a chair, with couple of broken monitors thrown into the mix.

"This is what's left of your goddamn kingdom. **_This_** is what's left of **_You_** , unless you'll help me out and move that port so I can grab it."

His cybernetic arm is pointing _up_ towards something and it suddenly becomes clear what it is when the perspective changes and Jack is looking _down_ on a whole scene. At the same time the panoramic screen facing Rhys shuts down in a flicker of sparks.

"Alright, now you're starting to get it." Rhys exhales. He's looking around as if hoping to pinpoint Jack's new location. "Just extend it towards me and I'll take care of the rest."

Something shifts in a former wall panel and Jack is only vaguely aware of the process of rearranging the snakelike port through the fog of blinking **"75% DATA CORRUPTION"** monstrosity that is slowly taking over.

"See you on the other side." Voice in the wires whispers.


	2. Interlude: Discarded audio journals found in the former Atlas facility.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aka - Things are said but nothing is explained.

**_WARNING_ ** _subss=ystems overload_

 

**_0:52_ **

"Welcome back."

The world comes back in a burst of too bright monitor lightbulbs and a blurry video feeds.

"If you're hearing this when you finish rebooting, it probably means I fell asleep working  _and/or_ stopped giving a damn about you and I'm long gone. Same deal, really."

Rhys smiles, but it's hardly comforting with a way his right sleeve hangs loose and the empty eye socket stares unblinkingly.

"Cupcake? The hell is-- Wait, what the heck am I supposed to do here?"

"You're probably asking yourself  ' _Wait, what the heck am I supposed to do here?'_."  Rhys imitates his taken-aback tone pretty flawlessly. "That's because I programmed that variable to keep the conversation flowing. Anyway. I dunno. Go play tetris." Rhys winks and the feed goes dead.

 

_**0:11** _

"Now, despite your best efforts to fuck this up I managed to integrate my old implant with the mainframe and, _Jack_ , the good news is that even dead, Atlas still hates your guts. "

"Firewall was _all over_ the place trying to stop me. But you know me, well, you know _yourself_ and little did it know-- now it's working for me. **_Us_**.  Huh. You see, this is one of the instances where 99.7% of recovered data makes a huge damn difference."

 

_**0:08** _

"--Yes, that's exactly what you think it is. Got **_all_** your coding riiight here, and _boy_ was I tempted to mess with it some more." Rhys humms appreciatively "Good work Nakayama did there. Not _perfect_. Obviously."

"Oh, good, you're moving around. Left you a couple of pre-recorded messages to smooth down the process."

 

_**0:36** _

"--Eridium deal? Well, yeah, sure, it was a part of the fund but if Hyperion was just granting prototypes to anyone with enough money-- You know what? Never mind. Let's just say that getting you riding shotgun in my brain was part of the _discount_.  Not that I complained seeing how they removed all the evidence of this little experiment from my brain and let me go on my merry way. But, at this point I was already granted all the access codes ** _, yadayada_** you know the rest. Sort of. "

"Jack, wha- **_No_**. Let me get this straight. Did you seriously just think-"  Rhys laughs sharply  "Did you seriously think that this- _You_ could just be uploaded in about anything?"  Rhys frowns  " _My_ brain almost ended up roasted from all the data overflow and  **_I_** had all the required authorization.  _And_ the last time I invited you inside I ended up tearing off my own goddamn arm."

"What? You would have preferred to be a friggin claptrap or somethin'?"

 

_**0:07** _

"Now, I'm not sure **_why_ ** \- Probably because Nakayama thought it would be hilarious- I had this whole  _Build a whole bunch of zombie Digijacks_.exe panic button installed.  But it's already taken care of." Rhys stops then mutters under his breath "What **_was_** he thinking?"

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of meta chapter I had to go with first to avoid further exposition and basically keep the flow the way I like it. I'm having fun. And surprisingly it's slowly shaping up the way I want.  
> Also if the pacing seems confusing, just remember that so did ep5.


	3. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit got fixed.

"Soo... now Rhys is, what exactly? Your friendly neighbourhood villain?"

"Yeah, well, I mean we all have one of those, right?  _Right?_ "

 Vaughn laughs uncetrainly and scratches his beard. Fiona just glares.

"Alright, I'll bite. What happened?"

\---

Vaughn considers his next step. The bunch of traumatized nerds he picked from the crash side slowly gain survival skills, even though at the moment they are limited to intimidating stragglers with laser pointers and running away when he tells them to. At the moment Vaughn's just thankful that the organic devastation and the looming blind eye of grounded Helios situated on the edge of the crater are just enough to keep the rich variety of Pandoran fauna away.

And honestly? Compared to the very begginings, their situation from months ago before they even dubbed themselves the "Children Of Helios" ( **Despite Vaughn's best efforts to not let that stick** )?  _Bandit life's not so bad._   

 ---

"So, you're telling me that someone's been crossing through Old Haven? Again?"

Mord nods, his blood streaked mask betraying nothing. Vaughn has yet to hear him speak.

They are sitting in the wreckage of the Hub of Heroism, the purplish moonlight pouring through the sizable hole in the ceiling, illuminating the dented plastic of the war table.

Vaughn takes a sip of truly terrible coffee. Processes. There's a knife driven through the wobbly marker drawing of a red house with an antenna sticking from the rooftop. Mord's usually a very reliable source of information, despite his insistance of communicating through shoving Vaughn around and ruining the furniture.

"So, uh. Are these people still there?"

Mord awkwardly raises two fingers. Vaughn exhales loudly into his coffee. 

"Aww, are you kidding me? There's only  _two_  of them?"

Mord shrugs. Then wiggles the only gloveless finger. Vaughn is done.

"One and  _ **the half**_? I'm sorry, Mord, but, like, it's three in the morning and your communication skills are just all over the place right no--"

Mord reaches across the table with something akin to the desperation, making Vaughn startle backwards. Then composes himself midway, gaining Vaughn's inquisitive raised eyebrow. Of all the bandits he had the dubious pleasure of knowing, Mord might just be the most frantic and mild mannered one. It's almost unnerving.

" _So_ , you want me to investigate?"

\---

 

That's how he finds himself in a neglected ghost town. Population: Twelve rotting corspes. Vaughn's buggy woobly crosses the Haven's sheet metal gates, just as the sun slugglishly raises above the yellow dust their trail leaves behind.

He took five or six people, just to be on the safe side, but not expecting any more resistance than a few late partying Psychos. Vaughn was known to be wrong about these things in the past.

 

Sun exposed white paint peels off the Gortys Facility walls, looming in the distance and for the moment Vaughn musses about the fact that, yet again, he finds himself in this strange ass city. That train of thought is abruptly forced to stop when sharp prickles pull in his chest at the memory of Rhys' dumb smile when he finally figured out Haven's integrated wiring. A year ago. It was just a year ago.

Vaughn's grip on his SMG tightens considerably. No use to let his mind wander right now--

_**"Cry me a river, Vaughn."** _

_"I-- What?"_

"  _I said_ -" Fiona rubs her forehead "Oh, for fuck- you know, never mind. Just get to the good part."

\---

 

"So far, coast's clear." Tatiana calls out, dismounting the buggy. Vaughn gives her a hopeful smile and receives an offhand thumbs up, the woman's attention already focused on something else. Vaughn picked her as his second in command, mostly due to her prior interest in shooting people, expressed frequently back on Helios. That and an eagerness to get her hands dirty.

The dead stillness of the street suggests that someone, possibly Mord, must have already taken care of the lingering psychos.

Vaughn sighs, lifting his mask and rubbing at the eye, as he moves a bit down the main street, letting the others get their bearings first. God, he'll never get used to the lingering smell of sweat the leather leaves behind. 

Tatiana joins him soon after, as well as two other people she deemed ready not to piss their pants if a little psycho with a chainsaw drops down on them from the rooftop. Vaughn nods at her, then walks backwards for a moment, just to make sure the remaining people left by the buggies are still alive where they left them. One of the nerds notices him and waves awkwardly. God, they are already dead.

"Why did Mordy get his panties in the twist anyway?" Tatiana inquires, glancing around the nearest, thankfully empty, corner. "He totally cleared out the whole place."

Vaughn has his own dawning suspicions.

"What if it's Rhys?" He says, then immediately bites his tongue. Someone behind him gasps theatrically. Shame on Vaughn. They don't discuss  _Rhys_  and it's a   _thing._  He quickly shooks himself off the lingering tactlessness of his remark and gazes upwards, focusing on something innocuous. Anntenas. So many goddamn antennas in this city.

"I dunno. That seems far fetched." Tatiana shrugs, but lowers her voice all the same. There's a tenseness in her shoulders that wasn't there a minute ago and she fiddles with her revolver holster unconsciously. "But, alright, Vaughn, I'll humor you."

Vaughn turns towards her, when they stop just in about the same spot he and Rhys were standing a year ago, trying to figure out the location of an Atlas facility. It's not much of a mystery right now if a looming building covered in rakk shit has anything to say about that.

"Why would he come back here?"

That makes Vaughn pause, several of ideas that make little sense, lighting up in his head. He shrugs, gripping his weapon tighter.

Now Tatiana looks slightly worried.

"You wanna try an ECHO comm again?"

Vaughn shakes his head out of habit, but then pauses. If they really were in his vicinity it was entirely possible that Rhys' ECHO eye would pick up on that.

"Yeah, alright, let's give it a shot."

\-------

 "Hey kiddo, Jack here is obliged to tell you that someone is trying to reach  _your Atl **ass** ness_. Ha, good one." Jack congratulates himself, but it lacks sincerity. Clearly he has regrets about that pun.

Rhys waves his hand somewhere overhead, which, when he's that deep into work could mean either, /patch them through/ or /fuck off/ with a high possiblity of both.

"Alright, but don't let that go into your head,  _I'm not your friggin secretary!_ " Jack bellows and the steady stream of static replaces his voice. Rhys spends about five seconds listening to the annoying white noise, before he sets down his glasses and questions the ceiling.

"Wait, why would someone try to contact a disjointed implant?"

"That's a great damn question and honestly, I don't give a fuck." Jack hovers on the nearby computer screen, making the vintage machine crackle with electricity. Clearly Atlas tech was not made to withstand terabytes of concious data and it shows. 

"Well, Jack, now you just made me pissed off and distracted." Rhys states, getting up from the chair and immediately regretting that decision, when his phantom arm throbs, throwing him off balance. "Any news from the security cameras?"

"As if we had any of 'em working."

"Remember last week, when I also referred to you as the coffee maker?" Rhys stares in dismal at the half assembled neural port, lying sadly on the junk covered table. It glows softly, circuits strapped to the diagnostics program, but otherwise useless "Because that's what you are right now. A glorified coffee maker, slash a shitty security system. Get to it." Jack grunts in reply, which probably means that Rhys will have to access the camera feeds manually. Resentful Jack is a lazy Jack.

\----

Rhys is in the middle of the hallway heading towards the sealed off security center room, lamps overhead flashing too bright more or less automatically with nearly silent  _ticks_. Sipping too strong coffee, because Jack holds grudges /forever/, he contemplates if he will find more dead bodies in there, slumped over the monitors and staring blankly into the oblivion. He decides he'll name the next one  ** _Jeff._**

 

Retina scanner by the door thankfully recognizes him and as the door slowly slides open, he is immediately struck with a stench of decay.

"Woah, not today, rot." Taking a lazly step backwards and practically burying his nose in the steaming cup, Rhys assesses the room.

As he predicted, there's a body, or what's left of it, lounging in the blood streaked chair, with it's back turned on Rhys. Honestly, he's kinda glad for it.

Several red colored lights start blinking, but none of them look important. Probably a start up procedures kicking in.

"Alright, let's do it." Rhys sighs, tensing in anticipation of his ECHO's command prompt lighting up. But there is just dull sense nothingness behind his eyelid, where the bandage rests. Rhys blinks heavily. "Plan B., then."

At this point he cannot be completely sure who he's talking to, but even the drone of his own voice comes as relief. Entering the room, he gingerly puts the coffee down on one of the inactive touchpad keyboards, that light up yellow, where the cup touches the surface, but otherwise does nothing.

Humming to himself, Rhys dumps Jeff none to gently onto the floor, before he realises that there is no possible scenario where he sees himself taking his place in that chair. Instead, he leans over the main lightened up board, making the quick work of all the avaliable prompts.

And that, is when Jack decides to join the party.

 **NEW BEST HIGHSCORE**  - Computer announces, with completely uncalled for, sadistic pleasure. He's briefly reminded of the psychopatic AI lady on Helios, cheerfuly infroming everyone that their space station is on the crash course with Pandora. Of course Jack tinkered with that one too.

"Are you slaying it on Tetris again?" Rhys mutters without enthusiasm. He's becoming painfully aware of the fact that he's so sleep deprived that even Jack's monster coffee isn't helping, aside from keeping him from immediate collapse on the floor.

Otherwise there is no immediate response, aside from the couple of monitors turning snowy white and staying that way. It is entirely possible that Jack beating up whoever Atlas employee best tetris score as an ultimate  _fuck you_ , put him in a good enough mood to help Rhys out.

 

Twenty minutes later, most of the cameras are operational again and the fact that about half of them have large bloody blotches on the lens is Athena's anger managment problem and not Rhys'.

More importantly, front yard security systems are back online mostly due to Rhys' amazing hacking abilities. Sadly, the same can't be said about the visuals. Apparently their last year frantic escape damaged something important and now the best Rhys can assess from the wobbly video feed is that there are several human shaped figures frolicking around. It's as good as nothing.

\-----

"Enjoying your goddamn break? Because they are already in the hall." Jack greets him, when he finally leaves the security center with a strategy in mind.

"Why didn't you stop them?" Rhys hides his irate expression in a cup, that's sadly mostly empty by now.

 **TURRETS OFFLINE**  - Familiar voice practically cackles with joy.

"You know they probably heard that, right?"

   **TURRETS OFFLINE**  - Disembodied voice repeats with even more delight. Rhys is vaguely aware of the fact that he decided to walk faster in the destination unknown.

"Jack, no."

" _Oh come ooon_ " Jack's digitalized voice whines. The empty cup shatters on the floor.

"How are you even doing that without--" Rhys frowns, poking around his head for the signs of familiar glitching fuzzines, but finding nothing just as Jack replies.

"Oh, pumpkin, it's /all/ you. Your better instincts finally kicking in."

\------

Vaughn wisely decides that he shouldn't share his premonition of the Gortys Facility being in fact haunted with all the Crimson Lance soldiers left in the hallway. Especially after hearing mysterious voice repeating something about turret malfunctions.

Despite everything, Tatiana seems mostly amused with facility's antics, even though her grip on revolver is as steady as ever.

Vaughn stares in dismal at the unresponsive ECHO recorder, as he climbs across the remains of the gigantic Atlas statue that litter the floor in large, marble chunks. He shouldn't haven gotten his hopes up at hearing from Rhys, even though he is basically in the place where their past resonates with the level of destruction left behind.

"You alright?" Tatiana calls after him. She still lingers near the front entrance, where she instructs two nerds about guarding their asses 'til they come back from the reconnaissance. 

"Yeah, just--" Vaughn answers, making a vague ' _dizzy_ ' hand gesture. Tatiana nods sharply, but otherwise doesn't look very assured. It seems like one way or another, shit's about to go down.

\------

The footsteps are echoing loudly in the corridor, moving right in front of Rhys' workshop just when the lights go out with a loud /thud/ of the powering down generator. Rhys nods to himself, flipping the switch of his portable battery light and bathing the unresponsive Dumpy that lies on the worktop, in harsh yellows. The shuffling outside his door starts and stops a couple of times, accompanied by low whispers, before all the noises move further down the hallway.

Rhys cradles the Dumpy awkwardly under his arm, but the small robot turns out to be a lot heavier than he bargained for so after bringing it to the corridor, he decides /fuck it/ and lets it sit gently on the floor. With all the lights out in the sector, it'll hopefully be enough to further confuse the tresspassers caught in the dark.   

Rhys takes a silent breath to mentally brace himself and in the meantime admire his last minute modification. He squints a little at the duct tape that connects Dumpy's mainframe and the circuitry of his implant at the front, the usual yellow headlight replaced with his darkened ECHO eye. It's probably not the best idea to attach Jack to some wild contraption, but /goddamnit/-- It's not like he had time to think it through.

Anyway, it's brilliant.

Rhys searches for the switch button and that's about the time his plan backfires.

 " _\--I think I can turn it back on_." The woman's voice calls out somewhere nearby, making him pause. His frown deepens, when about five seconds later the strange woman let's out the victorious whoop. Immediately, the emergency power supplies start kicking in, bathing the hallways in sickly blue, synthetic glow. Now he's is outright scowling.

 It's not enough to bust the entire operation but makes Rhys twitchy all the same. Now he has to be  _smart_  about it.

Flipping the switch, causes the small robot to rumble on the ground with obstructed air ducts. The attatched ECHO eye comes to life with a steady yellow glow and immediately twirls nervously, taking in the surrondings. 

Belately Rhys notes, that this could have gone smoother if he told Jack about his plan beforehand.

"Alright, Jack. I know this is kinda confusing, but I  _really_  need you to embrace being Dumpy for a second" Rhys says in hushed whisper. Somewhere in his hearshot another conversation is happening, but right now he's too busy to give a shit, holding Jack in place one handedly and trying to prevent him from combusting. "Anyway, here's the plan--" Jack's twitching grows more violent, his entire frame clearly overheating "Go scout for a bit, make some noise, so I can--"

Dumpy grows eerily still somewhere around  ** _make_**  and  ** _noise_**  and the ECHO eye suddenly zeroes in on Rhys.

Jack clearly tries replying, but instead he emits a sequence of inhuman shrieks.

"Can't tell the difference between this and your usual bitching" He shakes his head.

A human shout rings from down the hallway, making Rhys jolt and lose his sweaty grip around Dumpy. He scrambles up from his knees frantically, turning around just in time to witness the little robot bouncing off the wall with an angry /beep/, before charging at the baffled bandit and zapping him in the arm. And then again. And again.

The masked man jolts a little each time, but otherwise seems pretty alright with Jack's antics. Right until he boldly grabs the robot and slams it into wall.

" ** _Dum_** \- Jack, noo!"

It seems like a right moment to be mildly devastated.  Then he starts running.

\------

"-- _ **Dumpy**_   zapped you?" Fiona asks incredelously.

"It's not like it had a choice!" Vaughn waves his hand exasperatedly.

\------

**Author's Note:**

> Will anyone believe me when I say that it was supposed to be a fix it fic. I'm on tumblr as fullmetal-communist if you want to tell me that my platonic ship is dead.


End file.
